


Love Notes: Tinned Beans

by aquabelacqua



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Grocery Shopping, Internal Conflict, John Loves Sherlock, Johnlock Fluff, Johnlock Roulette, M/M, POV John Watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-20
Updated: 2015-04-20
Packaged: 2018-03-25 01:09:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3790990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aquabelacqua/pseuds/aquabelacqua
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson makes an important discovery in the beans aisle of Tesco. 1500 words of pure fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love Notes: Tinned Beans

John Watson is at Tesco buying beans. Rather, he’s clutching tin after tin of beans, studying the ingredients lists and labels with growing frustration. The basket in his other hand is digging into his fingers, the weight of everyday objects burying him in their ordinariness and their incorrectness. The yoghurt is wrong, damn it, and the coffee and the sugar wafers, and even the dish soap. It’s all too plain or too green or the labels are too cheerful or too boastful.

He throws back the Heinz, picks up the generic again. Grunts in frustration, shifts his weight to the other foot, trying to offset the burden of the hand basket, trying to ignore the beads of condensation that have begun to slide down the yoghurt container. He can’t  _see_  that right now. If he does, if he notices a puddle on the grocer’s floor, it will be back to dairy, back to the dozen-odd brands and flavors and pasteurization levels and he will have to start over. He will have to empty the whole fucking cart and start anew, stacking and sorting and choosing and acknowledging.

He should have gone to the other place, the one four Tube stops farther. The fine imports one with the soft lights and hushed staff and precise, handwritten signs. Their curated cheeses and exotic coffees and delicate, artisanal pastries. Surely he could find the right items there. Surely someone would take his arm and guide him to the correct aisles, murmur softly to him while they helped him fill his basket. Someone would help him select exactly the right tea, the perfect everything. Jesus, surely someone would  _help_  him. He begins to ease the heavy basket to the ground.

But, no, impossible. Impossible. He can’t spend half a paycheck on four grocery items, can’t imagine keeping his face clear of astonishment and ridicule while he empties his wallet and only half-fills his bag. He can’t imagine coming home with a single glass pot of French yoghurt and an ounce of hand-packed Earl Grey in a glassine envelope and a receipt totaling three-quarters of the monthly food budget. But then, he couldn’t have imagined this, either. Standing in Tesco, bloody  _marveling_  over which beans to bring home to tea.

Right. Well, everything is different now, isn’t it? He’d shown his hand, made a fool of himself in his own kitchen, and now here he is, head buzzing like the fluorescent lights above him.

The Heinz, then. A class above the generic but not showy, he hopes. John Watson tucks the beans into his basket, then hoists the basket back up onto his trembling forearm. Someone’s shoes squeak loudly on the linoleum behind him and his shoulders bow up toward his ears. If everything could just stop for a moment, he could concentrate. He’d know what he ought to do.

Biscuits, jam, soap, coffee, yoghurt, pasta, tea, olives.

That’s the list in its entirety. He should know, he wrote it this morning in the flat, squinting to read his own handwriting in the dull January light edging around the curtains. But it’s difficult to be certain because he left the list at home, half-crumpled on the kitchen table from a clench of panic. It’s difficult to remember, now, because—

— _No_ —

That’s it, he’s sure of it. That’s everything.

He turns around, bouncing the weight of the basket off of his thigh, scanning the tops of the aisles for the way out. He’s done the tea, the dairy, the starches— the morning and evening staples. There’s nothing left to do but escape this sensible, sterile bubble and return to the upside-down world inside his flat. He’d left in such a state, he’d not be surprised if the wallpaper had fallen to the floor in clawed-off strips, the braided racetrack rug and overhead fixtures somehow swapped. A multidimensional mindfuck. It’s just—

(no.)

—It’s just, he’d smelled so  _good_.

John Watson lets the basket sink to the floor at last, stretching back his aching palm with the opposite hand. He stares into nothing for a moment. Replays that thought.

He’d smelled lovely. That’s the plain truth of it.

Leaning over Sherlock to pull the list away, to stop his mad flatmate from scribbling more nonsense at the bottom of the shopping list, and that pretentious dressing gown—the new one, the silk creased from being packed into a neat square all the way home from Marrakesh—had gaped at the neck and John had  _smelled_  him. He couldn’t help it, really. And now he knows.

Spices and tea. Tobacco and ink. And, underlying it all, something sweet and soft and quiet and delicious. John scrubs at the stubble on his chin, the scent memory circling him like spirits at a séance. Sherlock Holmes had smelled like something John wants to smell again. And again.

And, worse— _worst_ —he’d said so. John Watson had opened his idiot mouth in the hush of morning, and, his wonderment as clear as day, had said,

“ _Jesus_ , Sherlock, you smell wonderful.”

Sherlock had turned his head back toward him. John had watched his inky black curls catch and release against the collar of that ridiculous robe as if in slow motion. Even in the weak light of morning, Sherlock’s eyes were the palest, brightest thing in the room. John had started to rock back on his heels, wanting to escape the words and use them as a barrier simultaneously. He could feel himself shaking his head while he stepped back but then his traitorous mouth had opened again.

“I wonder what you’d taste like.”

John Watson squeezes his eyes shut in the beans aisle of Tesco. The memory of those words burns a hot buckshot pattern into his cheeks. He can feel the flush on his neck, the tiny hairs there prickling as the heat rises past his collar and inches toward the tips of his ears. He slides his palms up to his face, willing his cool, trembling fingers to settle the bloom.

The air in the grocer’s is very thin, the piped-in music merry and overwhelming. He’s nearly alone at this hour of the morning but he can feel the oppressive weight of people in other aisles crowding him against the shelves. One more push and the edge of the metal will be pressing into his hips; he’ll rest his head on the shelf between the potted meats and bean tins and stay there. Preferably forever. A bewildered stockperson will wander by at some point, take his basket, reshelf his carefully curated collection of foodstuffs while he crumbles to dust in mortification.

“Sherlock,” he’d gasped, “I’m so—God, I’m sorry, so—”

And Sherlock had just watched him, still as a statue. His narrow features were smooth, unreadable as he watched John Watson leave the flat in a flurry of nerves and stumbling footfalls and jangling keys. The last glimpse he’d had inside the flat was of Sherlock, swathed in eighteen million metres of smoky Moroccan silk, staring back with his uncanny, heterochromic eyes.

Olives, coffee, jam, pasta, soap, biscuits, tea, sweating  _fucking_  yoghurt.

He needs to get back to the flat; he has to know what damage he’s done. He has to  _know_. John Watson picks up his basket, scans the contents quickly, hoping something will serve as a peace offering. A nice cuppa, fresh milk, some mild digestive biscuits. It’s a false coziness, a bit of nothing, but maybe it’s a start. Maybe it will be enough.

A lovely, curvy brunette brushes past him, sending his basket banging into his knees. John looks up and meets her eyes as she reaches a hand out in apology. He feels the light touch on his arm; the corners of his mouth turn up into a brilliant smile and her body relaxes. She opens toward the warmth of him, her body turning while he looks past her, while he thinks, wildly,  _not you_.

Ink and tobacco and tea and spices and sweet, soft, quiet, delicious. He wonders: how would that translate synesthetically? What does the smell of Sherlock Holmes  _taste_  like?

John Watson is buying beans at Tesco when he realizes he’s done for, when he knows, for certain, that his wanting to bury his nose in his best friend’s neck is not a one-off thing.

The lovely woman in the beans aisle walks away when he barks out an unexpected laugh and closes his eyes at the hopeless insanity of his situation. He has no idea what to do. He’s already, unconsciously, made a first move. And then left before sorting it out. In fact, he’s likely made an awful, irrevocable mess of  _everything_. But, somehow, he wants to undo exactly none of it. Somehow, in fact, he wants to do more.

John Watson fishes his vibrating phone out of his jacket pocket, heart in his throat. He swipes the screen with shaking fingers, and then drops his basket on the grocer’s floor.

 

 _Come home if you’d like to find out_  -SH

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!
> 
> (ETA - I am aquabelacqua on Tumblr. Just sayin' :::shy toe-shuffle:::)
> 
> UPDATE! The incredible and talented miamam translated this story into Czech on her blog! THANK YOU!!!!! Please take a peek here: [Love Notes: Tinned Beans (Czech translation)](https://johnlockpositive.wordpress.com/2016/10/12/konzerva-fazoli)


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